Spelling thoughts for my 12yo

We too used SP for several of our children, and didn’t see great results either. We’ve seen much better results using dictation, which, as I understand it, is how CM approached spelling. My 14-year-old has used Spelling Wisdom (love it)for the past several years, and the two 11-year-olds use passages from their history and literature books – this is a nice, cheap option and makes the passages relevant and interesting to them.

I try to choose a passage that has some words I know will be a challenge to them, along with some punctuation I also want them to concentrate on, such as quotation marks, etc, depending on what they’re working on. I may choose from 1-4 sentences depending on the length of the passage. The boys study the passage, looking for difficult words and practicing those they aren’t sure of, noticing the punctuation, etc. Sometimes they write the passage down, as practice. Later that day, I read it slowly, a bit at a time, as they try to write it down properly. It took a bit of practice, but they’re doing really well with it now. We do it 3-4 days per week.

My youngest ds, almost 9, uses this free online dictation book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=-vIAAAAAYAAJ&dq=modern%20speller&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

and I simply choose a passage each day and keep moving forward. Here are two other free dictation resources:

http://books.google.com/books?id=H78AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=RdMAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

These could give you an idea of the types of passages you could choose; adjust the level to where he’s challenged but not overwhelmed.

All I can suggest is to bump up the copywork/dictation. I have seem some improvement not only in the spelling, but in the *attention* to whether a word is spelled correctly. I feel my son had not paid the attention necessary needed to spell well and just flew through the sentence writing/narrations. For my son, he needed to slow down and really focus on the words; plus, the less mistakes he made, he faster we could move on.

I hope that made sense. I’m sure a program would work, as well, but for now (and for this son), the copywork/dictation is working (I just have to stay consistent).